We Are All Confident Idiots (2014)

We are all confident idiots and this is why the ego was created in evolution.

Ego is needed to make you think you are better than others at something, eventhough initially you may not be. Without ego, people would be Marvin The Paranoid Android but depressed because we didn't have the capabilities or opportunities to compete with all the smarter people around or in history. People that are laser focused and don't listen to any naysayers, those people can become successful more than people that don't even attempt to due to humbling competition.

The reason why childhood is so nice is that you can dream and imagine on becoming anything. Reality bites that in the behind, but the ones that can overcome and pursue, prevail over the ones that do not go beyond their limit. The trick is to be rooted in the real adult world, but break the rules and don't listen to others when you have a desire to push in an area with a beginners or child mind. Just do it says your ego.

The internet is a humbling experience for the ego. Competition was only your local tribe before the internet, now it is worldwide. This is both humbling and also allows humans an insight that has never before been able to be realized, you can see how you need to compete with the entire world. It is inspiring all the time and seemingly insurmountable at times, but jump start that ego and you to can be competing. Everyone can be good at something, time and focus, as well as competition can push you.

Without ego humanity may not have made it this far.

When you convince yourself you can do it, by making iterative gains to fuel more motivation, it must turn to discipline and professionalism, and that means blocks of time all the time on your focused goal or project in both the open (creative / brainstorming / ideas / play) and closed (prototypes / ship time) mode. The overnight successes are always in a multi-year focused strategy.

Check out the market, but don't be too focused on chasing what others are doing, focus on your area that meets your goals. Use that ego motivation and stay away from getting too beat down because others are far ahead.

"Read and write four to six hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can't expect to become a good writer" -- Stephen King

"Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and got to work" -- Stephen King

"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing." -- Walt Disney

So our attitude to others should be more like Wally and less like Dilbert and Alice? I like it! And I may add, “Mission Accomplished”, though it took me over 30 years.

Wayne, is that you?

I hated you at first for modifying the core libraries to break standard fuctionality, writing 500-line SQL statements full of string concatenations and using mutable globals all over the place, but now I see your point. Thanks, I have been earning an above average salary fixing your bugs and I will have a job for life. Still, fuck you man.

No, its not Wayne but he's my spirit brother. I can see us both in the forest, banging the drum of expediency while the world flails us with stinging nettles.

"they also serve, who only stand and stuff up the codebase"

Also, FORTRAN globals and variables called i,j and k ROCK!

> It is better to weep with wise men than to laugh with fools.

-- Spanish Proverb

I agree, especially since the fools are the major source of things to weep about.